gaz
Cycle Camera TV
- Location
- South Croydon
The results are out. I've had a quick read but I've seen nothing meaningful so far.
http://www.london.gov.uk/publication/pedal-power
http://www.london.gov.uk/publication/pedal-power
60 per cent of respondents did not feel safer using the cycle superhighways and two-thirds did not feel they were respected by other road users.
I rate Val Shawcross very highly, and she'll know portions of CS7 very well. And, to be fair, CS7 is a bit hit and hope, not to say hit and miss, and big questions were shirked at Stockwell, Oval and the Elephant.I think in reading the London Assembly Transport Committee's report, we must bear in mind who is on the committee and who the chair/deputy chair are.
Unfortunately, as with a lot of things within the London Assembly, the work of this committee tends to fall victim sometimes to party politics (from all parties, I hasten to add).
it's not is it. The man is a ****ing meanspirited moron.Freewheeler had a nice write up today http://crapwalthamforest.blogspot.com/
It is still early days yet for the Boris bikes, so to be slagging them off on the basis of limited modal shift from car is silly.
While there are a lot more legitimate worries about the CSH, to my mind they represent a great step in establishing the principle that cycle routes need to be fast and direct and therefore to follow the main road corridors. Sending cyclists on illegible fractal routes round the back-streets, onto pavements and on gravelly tow-paths hasn't worked, so at least the CSH are defining the corridors and will hopefully focus future efforts onto improving those routes.
Silly? Why? I think it is quite important that we see a large shift away from the motor vehicle as a means of urban transport. It's all very well shuffling people from public transport to bikes, but - at least as far as buses are concerned - the volume of motor traffic has a significant impact on journey times. We need to see the use of the car seem unattractive, compared to other modes of urban conveyance - be it walking and cycling, or public transport.
As it happens, the Boris Bike scheme has failed to get anywhere close to its modest target of shifting people from cars to bikes. Less than 1% of Boris Bike users have switched from cars for their journeys, compared to a target of 5%. Granted, the scheme also aims to take pressure off public transport - but this is, in isolation, a pretty miserable statistic.
...
I agree, but you missed the point. By helping free up capacity on public transport further modal shift from cars is encouraged. And it is early days! It hasn't even been in operation for a full year yet, and still on a restricted set of users. You'd never expect to have any meaningful evaluation of the modal impacts of a transport scheme so soon after its introduction, even if it were fully implemented.
I imagine that not you're familiar with the zone in which the hire bikes operate. The private car is very much a minority thing - there are already streets, and some fairly major roads in which bikes outnumber cars. The bulk of motorised traffic is commercial. In isolation it's not so much a miserable statistic as an irrelevant one. And the report makes clear that people who have never cycled in London before are using the hire bikes.Silly? Why? I think it is quite important that we see a large shift away from the motor vehicle as a means of urban transport. It's all very well shuffling people from public transport to bikes, but - at least as far as buses are concerned - the volume of motor traffic has a significant impact on journey times. We need to see the use of the car seem unattractive, compared to other modes of urban conveyance - be it walking and cycling, or public transport.
As it happens, the Boris Bike scheme has failed to get anywhere close to its modest target of shifting people from cars to bikes. Less than 1% of Boris Bike users have switched from cars for their journeys, compared to a target of 5%. Granted, the scheme also aims to take pressure off public transport - but this is, in isolation, a pretty miserable statistic.
This is the key point. Improving the routes. If people feel safer, we will see people who have never used a bike before (and this is what it is all about) switching from cars.
The nature of the routes so far, and the general hostility of TfL to measures which might impede the flow of motor vehicles, does not fill me with confidence.
Still, we'll see.
Even if it were possible, or even desirable to put a bike lane down (say) the Strand and Fleet Street (and it's neither) it would cost getting on for fifteen million and afford pedestrians and cyclists, commercial vehicle users, taxis and buses the most almighty disruption for months on end. And all to make the lives of pedestrians that much more complicated.
Indeed: somebody on the Boris Bikes forum calculated that the cost of Crossrail would pay for 1 million Boris Bikes.The cost is minuscule compared with building new public transport infrastructure.
Indeed: somebody on the Boris Bikes forum calculated that the cost of Crossrail would pay for 1 million Boris Bikes.